


Man's Best Friend

by osprey_archer



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dogs, Flashbacks, Gen, Hair, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 18:53:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17106218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: When Bucky gets a dog, Steve tries to be happy that he's got a new best friend. After all, Bucky deserves a friend who doesn't have flashbacks to the helicarriers every time he gets too close - unlike Steve.





	Man's Best Friend

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ZepysGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZepysGirl/gifts).



> Thank you to littlerhymes for betaing this!

Steve first learns about the dog when Bucky brings her to Steve’s makeshift hospital room for a visit. Steve is still sore all over from a bomb that exploded just a little too close, but he manages to turn his head to look at the golden retriever trotting at Bucky’s side. 

“Where?” he asks. His voice is hoarse. The smoke from the explosion stripped his throat. 

Bucky correctly understands this to mean _where did you get the dog?_ They can still understand each other almost telegraphically, just like they used to.

“In the basement lab of that Hydra fortress,” Bucky says. “Standing over the corpse of one of the captive scientists – guarding her, I guess. Someone had broken the poor girl’s neck.”

Steve widens his eyes. _One of us?_ , he’s asking. 

Bucky shakes his head. “The body was already stiff. She must’ve been dead for hours by the time I got there.” He smiles, that same sad crooked smile he always gets when he has to smile because otherwise he might cry. “Don’t clear out the mines all by yourself next time, huh?”

“Wasn’t…” Steve begins. _Planning on it_ , he meant to finish, but it hurts too much to talk.

Bucky reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder. Steve flinches. 

Flinching hurts so much that his vision whites out, so he can’t see Bucky’s face, but he knows the look he’ll have on his face: hurt and anger and guilt. It’s the look he always gets when he reaches out, just like he’s always done, to fling an arm around Steve’s shoulder or give him a friendly shake or a hug – and Steve flinches. It’s been three months since he returned and Steve still flinches.

By the time Steve can see again, Bucky’s face has smoothed to a cheerful mask. Bucky used to wear that look for his mama when money got tight and he had to give up college to work. _I don’t mind, Ma. Honest._

That’s what Steve sees when the pain fades enough for him to see anything again. The charming crooked smile of the mask. 

Bucky sits down. It’s better when he’s not looming over Steve.

“You want me to leave the dog?” he asks. “She’ll keep you company.” 

Steve gives his head a tiny shake. “Sleep,” he mumbles, meaning, _I need to sleep, so please leave._

“’Kay,” Bucky says softly. His chair scrapes on the linoleum. “C’mon, buddy,” he murmurs to the dog. 

The dog trots at his heels as they leave. Steve’s last glimpse of them is the light from the hallway gleaming on the dog’s golden fur. 

***

Steve returns home about a week later. The doctors pronounce his recovery miraculous. He’s still pretty sore. 

He’s nearly forgotten about the dog. He trips over it when it greets them at the door, and would have faceplanted on the carpet if Bucky didn’t grab him.

For a moment, he’s holding Steve close, his arm around Steve’s waist and his body warm against his back. And it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s better than okay: it’s everything Steve’s wanted, and for once he’s not afraid. 

Bucky lets him go and eases himself away. Steve crosses to the couch – three steps from the door – and flops down on it. The trip to his apartment has tired him out.

One of his arms drapes off the edge of the couch. The dog trots over and sniffs his fingers, gently burying his nose in Steve’s palm. 

Steve strokes the dog’s soft head. “What’s his name?” Steve asks.

His voice is still soft and hoarse and muffled by the couch pillows, but Bucky hears him. “Her,” he corrects. “Dunno.” 

“Rin Tin Tin,” Steve suggests. He coughs weakly. 

Bucky laughs obligingly. He comes over, a mug of tea in his hand – “With honey,” he says; “The doctors said it would be good for your throat” – and bends down to give the dog a very thorough scratch behind her ears, down her sides, along her back. The dog gazes up at him mournfully. 

Steve drags the blanket off the back of the couch and pulls it over his head. 

Before Bucky got back, Steve wanted nothing more than for Bucky to hug him. He wanted Bucky’s arm around his shoulder, the heavy warmth of it, the sudden pressure as he squeezed, the quick hair ruffle. Or one of Bucky’s bear hugs.

Steve knows that one of Bucky’s arms is metal now, but he can still feel those old hugs, warm and tight, and tightening further till Bucky picked him up and swung him around while Steve yelled, “Let me down, you oaf!” Loving every minute of it, of course. Even more after the serum, even though he was too big for Bucky to swing around then. Bucky would still pick him up.

But then Bucky returned. The very first time they met again, after the helicarriers, Bucky held out his hand for a handshake – just a handshake – his face looming close in Steve’s vision, and a fire alarm went off in Steve’s head: red lights flashing, sirens screaming, _get away get away get away_ , as if Bucky’s face will twist again into that hate-filled grimace and he’ll start punching Steve’s face again. And again. And again. 

***

The dog seems sad.

Steve supposes this is to be expected. The dog is probably traumatized, after seeing her person murdered, and God knows what she might have experienced in Hydra before that. 

She spends a lot of time lying on the floor with her head on her paws and her ears drooping. Oftentimes Bucky will sit on the floor too, rolling a ball back and forth between his palms, and then rolling it gently across the floor to the dog. 

She’s too well-trained to simply ignore the ball. There will be a pause, and then she lifts her head and sniffs the ball, and pushes it back to Bucky with her nose or a paw, and then settles her muzzle on her paws again and gazes at Bucky reproachfully. 

Then Bucky rolls the ball back to her. The cycle starts all over again.

This can continue for hours. Steve watches, strangely fascinated, drifting in and out of a doze on the couch. Sometimes Bucky sends the ball across the floor in a gently wave of bounces rather than a roll. 

On the third day – maybe the ball hits a knot in the floor, or maybe Bucky’s just gotten bored. But halfway across the floor, the ball bounces off to the side, so it’s rattling away from the dog rather than toward her.

The dog surges to her feet. Her drooping ears perk; her drooping tail rises. For a moment she stands like that, like a hunting dog catching the scent – and then she dashes across the room to fetch the ball, and comes back to Bucky with her tail high and jaunty.

Bucky hugs her around the neck, pressing his face against her furry ear. Her tail wags. She licks his ear. 

***

After this, Bucky starts to take the dog for walks – not just short trips outside to use the facilities, but real walks, which soon stretch for hours. Steve feels neglected. 

This is silly, and he knows it. He can look after himself now: he has healed enough to make himself lunch and do his own laundry. He makes a lot of soups. Bucky’s return often finds him napping on the couch. 

The doctors are puzzled by his lethargy and murmur when they think they’re out of earshot (they’re always forgetting about Steve’s super-hearing) about Hydra’s chemical weapons. 

Natasha arrives one day just after Bucky and the dog set out on one of their excursions. “He kept the dog,” she comments to Steve, casting herself on the other end of the couch and stretching out, so her toes nearly touch his waist. “I didn’t think he would.”

“He’s always liked dogs,” Steve says. He is not really tired, but he has gotten so used to lying on the couch all day that he’s not sure what else to do with himself.

“What’s her name?” Natasha asks. 

“Bucky hasn’t named her,” Steve says. 

“We could name her,” Natasha suggests. She draws her leg back in, sitting cross-legged, her chin propped on her fists. “Lassie?”

“No,” Steve says. 

“Old Yeller?”

“What?”

“I guess that’s after your time. What about Fido?” Natasha is enjoying herself. 

Steve is not. “She’s Bucky’s dog,” he says. “I guess he just wants to call her dog right now.” 

“Like Cat,” says Natasha. “From _Breakfast at Tiffany’s_.”

Steve nods like he knows what she’s talking about. 

Natasha’s mouth curls in a smile. “You’ve never seen it.”

“The scene where they dust the French toast with gold flakes is really something else.” 

She laughs. “Let’s watch it,” she suggests. “It’s a classic.” 

***

They watch _Breakfast at Tiffany’s_. Then Natasha tries to convince Steve to watch _Roman Holiday_ , because he let slip that he’d never seen an Audrey Hepburn film before and she says that Steve’s film education has been tragically neglected – “Because you watched so many movies in the Red Room,” Steve scoffs.

“We did,” Natasha says. “But they picked all the wrong ones – classics and Oscar winners and none of the movies all the girls our age knew by heart. I once got made because I didn’t recognize the _Charlie’s Angels_ pose.”

And then she wants him to watch _Charlie’s Angels,_ but Steve insists that if he sees one more movie the eyestrain will blind him, and Natasha says that she’s starving anyway and will doubtless perish without ice cream – _no_ , Steve, not the cheap vanilla that’s been in your freezer six months. “Salted caramel cashew ripple,” she says.

“Is that really a thing?” 

“On a chocolate dipped waffle cone,” Natasha says. “Maybe with sprinkles. I know a great place if you’re up for a walk.” 

Steve feels surprisingly energetic. 

It’s nice outside, early fall, still warm in DC. The leaves are still mostly green, just touched with red or gold at the tips. There are quite a lot of people walking dogs. 

Natasha beelines for the ice cream place, but they mosey on the way back, licking their ice creams. The sun is warm on Steve’s shoulders. The ice cream is creamy and cold on his tongue. He got butter pecan. 

They are halfway home when they catch sight of Bucky in the distance – across the street, nearly a block down, walking easily with the dog trotting at his heels. Steve waves to greet them. Bucky lifts his free hand in return. 

He stops about six feet from them when they meet. Natasha closes the gap, going down on one knee by the dog. “You’re looking good,” she tells the dog. 

But the dog sidles backward, pressing against Bucky’s leg. Her tail is low and wags slowly. Bucky ruffles her ears. “I think she remembers you from that basement,” he tells Natasha, apologetically; and then, to the dog, “It’s okay, buddy. She’s on our team.”

Natasha holds out the last little bit of her cone. The dog sniffs it cautiously. The temptation proves too much: she takes it from Natasha’s hand and crunches it down. Natasha stands, brushing off her hands, triumphant. 

“Why would Hydra let a captive have a dog?” Steve asks. 

Natasha looks at him, just for a moment. “So they could threaten to kill it if their captive scientist ever tried to disobey them.” 

“Oh.” 

Steve wonders, later, if the Red Room did something similar, and that’s why she understood it so fast. If Hydra ever gave Bucky a dog.

But he only thinks of it long after she leaves, and he doesn’t have the heart to ask Bucky a question like that when he’s lying on the floor with the dog sprawled across his chest. 

***

Steve is jealous of the dog. 

He hates to admit it even to himself. It sounds so stupid, so childish. It’s good that Bucky has the dog. He spent so much time at loose ends before he had her, drifting around the apartment, trying to read to catch up on all that he missed but staring into space instead. Steve did that himself in the early days. Picked up a book determined to read about the fall of China or the Cuban Missile Crisis or women’s lib and ended up staring out the window, watching the strange cars go by, the terrible lonely feeling that he is out of place here and will never belong trying to claw its way out of his chest. 

The dog gives Bucky a focus, the way SHIELD gave Steve a focus – except that the dog will never betray him. Bucky takes the dog for long walks. He brushes her fur to a lustrous shine. He buys a special cookbook of meals that both humans and dogs can eat and cooks for them all together and complains to Steve about the invidiousness of kibble companies. “How the hell did they convince people that real food is bad for dogs?” he asks Steve. “Dogs have been eating it for ten thousand years.” 

Steve murmurs something noncommittal. His eyes are fastened on Bucky’s hand, the way Bucky’s thumb rubs the hollow by the dog’s ears that makes the dog’s eyes nearly shut with happiness. 

“Probably hundreds of thousands,” Bucky muses, “if you count the time when they were wolves. You like real food, don’t you, buddy?”

The dog barks in agreement. She always knows when someone is talking to her, and if an answer is required. Steve wonders if that was part of her training, or if she’s just very smart. 

She is a very well-trained dog. Bucky loves discovering the commands she already knows. She can sit and stay and walk nicely by his side – she never drags the leash the way lots of dogs do – and shake hands and roll over and fetch. Bucky keeps discovering new objects she knows by name: balls, slippers, Frisbees. “Fetch a blanket,” he tells her one night, when he and Steve have been watching a movie, and to their astonishment she trots off and returns, dragging a blanket behind her. “Good girl! Good girl!” 

Bucky scratches both sides of her neck – he’ll touch her with his metal hand now, very gently – and kisses her nose and laughs when she licks his face in return. Her tail whips back and forth so fast she nearly swipes a box of tissues off the coffee table. “Good girl!” Bucky declares. 

Steve slinks off to the gym and attempts to work out his feelings by destroying a punching bag. He is unsuccessful. The punching bags have been reinforced since he first defrosted. 

Oh well. It’s not like breaking punching bags ever made him feel much better in the first place. 

Autumn drifts toward winter. The walks grow, if anything, longer. Bucky comes back with red cheeks and sparkling eyes. He no longer even tries to throw his arm around Steve’s shoulder these days. They wander around the apartment as if they are both in their own giant plastic hamster balls. If they get too close to each other, which is not very close at all, they bounce off and careen away. 

Late one afternoon, after they have spend a frustrating day bouncing off each other like billiard balls, Bucky stands at the window gazing out at the lowering red sun, and he muses, “Maybe I’ll go for another walk.”

The dog is instantly at his heels. 

“ _Another_?” Steve blurts. 

Bucky has only half turned away from the window. He stops. “You could come sometimes,” he says, and he sounds just as annoyed as Steve. “We always stop at the chili cheese dog place. Don’t we, buddy?” And the dog barks, just like she knows what he’s talking about, and prances around his legs. Bucky’s grinning down at her. 

“Nah. I know when I’ll be the third wheel,” Steve says.

He means to say it lightly, jokingly, but Bucky’s head lifts sharply and his grin disappears, and Steve knows he sounded resentful. “She’s a dog, not a dame, Steve,” Bucky says. “Why don’t you try to make friends? C’mon and pet her.”

“She’s your dog,” Steve protests. 

“She’s not gonna switch allegiances just because you pet her one time, dumbass,” Bucky says. “You’re not that great.”

Steve finds Bucky’s exasperation weirdly endearing. “Well,” he says. “Okay.”

He scoots across the room. He’s close enough that he can feel Bucky close to him, like there’s some kind of force field around him, and it makes his heart speed up unpleasantly – as if he were standing too close to a crocodile. 

_This is Bucky,_ he reminds himself. _He would never hurt you on purpose._

The dog licks his hand. Steve rests his hand on her neck and strokes her warm soft fur. She rests her head on his knee, gazing up at him with such soulful eyes that he can’t resist fondling her soft floppy ear. Her tail thumps happily against the carpet. 

“Steve,” Bucky says.

His voice is soft. Steve’s heart gives a nervous thump, but that murmur is not at all like that harsh despairing shout on the helicarriers. The dog licks his hand. Steve’s heartbeat smoothes out. “Mmm?” he says. 

“Is it okay if…?”

Bucky doesn’t finish the sentence. The dog gazes up at Steve with her warm brown eyes. Steve smiles down at her. He is still aware – very aware of Bucky’s proximity, but for once the awareness isn’t painful. He sees Bucky’s hand move out of the corner of his eye, and he finds himself drawing in his breath to hold it, and the dog wiggles forward a smidge to touch her nose to his knee and he’s smiling down at her again, and breathing. 

Bucky rests his palm on the top of Steve’s head. 

The hackles on Steve’s neck rise, as if he were a dog himself. But unlike a dog he has no actual visible hackles, and Bucky does not remove his hand. Steve doesn’t breathe. Bucky’s hand is heavy and warm and not unpleasant. Steve remains still, his head bowed, his hands buried in the dog’s fur. He can feel her warm breath through the knee of his blue jeans. He draws his hands through her fur, and he can breathe again. 

Bucky strokes his hand gently over Steve’s hair. 

No one has stroked Steve’s hair since his mom died, which was – God, he’s not even going to calculate how many years ago – and it’s strange. But it’s nice, too: it’s gentle. Steve’s hackles smooth under the soft touch of Bucky’s hand. 

They are so close together, actually touching, close enough that Steve can hear Bucky’s breathing – soft and slow, not at all like the desperate harsh panting on the helicarrier. They are so close, and Steve’s heartbeat has slowed back down to its normal rate, or something close, although Steve is very aware of each thump. 

Bucky scratches the nape of Steve’s neck with his blunt nails. Steve tries to suppress the tremor that runs down his back, but that only makes it larger when it breaks loose: he gives a big shake all over, almost like a dog shaking its fur dry.

And then he makes the mistake of looking in Bucky’s face. It is right there, right next to his, and Steve nearly catapults himself backward to get away from him. 

Bucky’s hand hangs frozen in midair where Steve’s head had been. He tucks it very carefully in his pocket. Even the dog is quiet, her brown eyes worried as she looks between them.

Bucky levers himself to his feet. The dog jumps up too, trotting to rub her head against his knee. His hand drops to her ears almost carelessly. “I should go,” Bucky murmurs. 

“For a walk?” Steve is still kneeling on the floor.

Bucky shakes his head. “I ought to leave,” he says, and then clarifies. “Find a new place to stay.” 

“No!” Steve cries.

Bucky’s looking at the dog. She whines softly. Bucky drops to one knee by her side, giving her fur a good rub, not looking at Steve. “I should’ve gone before. You don’t like having me around, Steve. It’s okay.” 

“I do,” Steve insists. 

Bucky shakes his head. His hair swings in his face. “You make a face every time I get near you,” he says, and he makes a face himself, mimicking Steve: a look of pugnacity and disgust. 

Steve is appalled. He had never realized his face looked that way – had never thought about his face looking any way at all, had only worried about making sure his fear didn’t show in his face. 

Well. It didn’t. 

He feels as though he is seeing himself through Bucky’s eyes: returning home to a Steve who seems distant, who always contrives to put space between them, whose faces congeals into that grimace whenever Bucky gets close – who offers no explanation why.

“It’s okay,” Bucky says again. His voice is horribly steady. “I’ve got a standing invite to crash at Natasha’s place. You did enough already, Steve. Anyone else would’ve killed me on the helicarriers.”

Steve dry-swallows. There’s no spit left in his mouth. “It’s not that I don’t like you,” Steve says. His voice comes out hoarse. “It’s just… when you get close.” God, he hates admitting this; hates that there is any challenge he can’t conquer on his own. “I flash back to the helicarriers. When you were leaning over me punching my lights out.” The hot breath, the flecks of spit and sweat, the twisted face. The pain. 

He manages to look over at Bucky. Bucky’s face has crumpled in on itself. It looks like he might cry. “Then I have to leave,” he says. “It’ll just hurt you if I stay.” 

“You’re not hurting me,” Steve says vehemently. “It’s – my brain is hurting me, not you.” But Bucky is shaking his head, and Steve says, even more firmly, “It will hurt me more if you leave. Don’t you know how much I missed you?”

“Did you?”

There’s a wistfulness in Bucky’s tone that breaks Steve’s heart. He’s filled with – not remorse, precisely; he’s been doing the best he can. But sorrow.

“I missed you so much,” Steve says. “I looked for you for months, Buck. You know that.” 

“Yeah. ‘Cause you thought I’d be valuable or something. But then I got back, and you could barely stand to look at me.”

Bucky’s got his head down now. He is petting the dog, slowly, stroking all down her back, and he looks like he’s giving her all his attention and barely paying any to Steve at all – except the dog is gazing up at him with soft brown eyes, and licks his face, and Bucky rubs his face with his sleeve and presses a hand over his eyes, and Steve thinks maybe he is crying. 

“I should’ve told you,” Steve said. His throat is tight. He’s afraid he may cry too. “You know how much I’ve always hated admitting I couldn’t do everything all on my own. I didn’t want to admit to you that I…” 

He is crying, damn it. He pauses to blow his nose. That doesn’t stop the tears, but that’s all right. Some things are worth crying about. The dog is resting her head on Bucky’s knee now, and Bucky is scratching the side of her neck. 

“But I’ve always been glad you were back,” Steve says. “Always. Even though it must have looked like I… I’m sorry, Buck. I never thought how it must’ve looked to you all those times I pulled away.” 

Bucky is listening, his head down, stroking the dog’s head with his flesh hand. It’s a slow, steady stroke, and Steve breaks off, watching him, and then he says, “Buck, just sit like that for a minute, okay?”

Bucky looks up. “Huh?”

Steve’s across the room, so his heart only gives a little jump at this sudden view of Bucky’s face. “No, like you were before,” he said. “Looking down at the dog. If you’ll…”

Bucky does it. He looks down at the dog, and begins to pet her again, running his hand not just over her head but all the way down her back now. The dog’s tail wags slowly. She rests her cheek on Bucky’s knee and gazes up at him. 

Steve licks his lips. He has an idea now, maybe a bad one, but if it’s going to work at all he needs to keep talking – keep this peaceful mood going. 

“I wish I could go back,” Steve says. “I wish I could go back and tell you early on, so you’d know that it wasn’t… it wasn’t you. It wasn’t anything you’re doing now. It’s just my memories of the helicarriers, that’s all. And even if it’s hard sometimes…”

Steve is crossing the floor, approaching Bucky, and he knows that he is looming over him and he can see the faint tightening in Bucky’s shoulders that says Bucky knows it too; but Bucky doesn’t pull away. 

“Even if it’s hard sometimes, it’s still a thousand times easier than when I thought you were dead,” Steve says, and he drops down on one knee. He’s very close to Bucky. He can feel the dog’s breath on his knee. 

Steve reaches out – he has a moment to see that his hand is shaking – and gently rests his hand on Bucky’s hair. 

He is tensed for Bucky to lash out, knock him away, push him down; he knows he should have asked, except he doesn’t know the words, and even if he did he doubts Bucky knows how to accept any more than Steve would, if someone asked _Can I pet your hair?_

But Bucky doesn’t knock him away. He does shudder, one quick full-body shiver, and the dog lifts her head and perks up her ears; but Steve smoothes his hand over Bucky’s hair, the same slow stroke Bucky used on Steve’s hair, the one he’s using now to pet the dog. The dog’s ears droop and she relaxes again to rest against Bucky’s thigh. 

They remain like that for a while: Bucky petting the dog, his head lowered, loose strands of hair falling in his face, and Steve stroking Bucky’s hair. At last Bucky gives a little sigh, and moves away, and Steve knows to drop his hand, and for a while they sit quietly side by side.

The dog’s feet twitch. Bucky smiles, the expression visible in the rounding of his cheek, even though he keeps his head down. “She’s chasing squirrels in her sleep,” Steve says.

“Good dog,” Bucky says. “Good girl.” He rests one hand on her head, like a benediction, and he says, “We oughta name her, Steve.” 

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. “You got any ideas?”

“Well,” Bucky says. He rubs the back of his neck. “I guess I’ve been calling her Buddy a lot. I think maybe she thinks that’s her name.” 

“That’s a good name,” Steve agrees. “Buddy.” 

“Yeah,” says Bucky. He lies down on the rug, his cheek pillowed against the dog’s side. He doesn’t look at Steve, but his hand reaches out, searching for Steve’s, and Steve takes it and holds on. 

“It’s always good to have a buddy,” Steve agrees.


End file.
